


Eidolon

by Pseudothyrum



Series: The Discoverie of Witchcraft [8]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms, The Question (Comics)
Genre: Case Fic, Crossover, Gen, Hub City: What doesn't kill you now will almost certainly kill you eventually™, It's not about the food Charlie, People who can't talk about their feelings, Symbolism, lest we forget the Video-Radio War, the past present and future will always have been be be going to coming back to bite you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 03:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudothyrum/pseuds/Pseudothyrum
Summary: During what should have been a routine corruption case, Question finds himself in way over his head. Constantine, who just wanted to spend a nice week relaxing with his favourite vigilante, is dragged into the middle of it.





	Eidolon

**Author's Note:**

> Haha so when I started writing this I said to my beta "I want this to be a short little break story, where everybody is happy and nothing bad happens." That... did not work out. 
> 
> This is, as always, dedicated to my beta, and to everybody who reads and comments and cares about these two idiots as much as I do. You are what keeps me going. I love you.

Vic is working late in his office at the station when the call comes in. He squints at his phone, for a moment so immersed in the monologue he’s writing that he doesn’t remember that John had changed his ringtone to the _Murder, She Wrote_ theme song.

“Vic Sage speaking,” he says, instinctively flipping his notebook to a new page, catching the pen this movement had dislodged just before it rolls off his desk.

“Hey,” the voice on the other end of the line is nervous and hushed, the speaker clearly trying to avoid notice. Vic perks up. “I’m calling about the, uh, you know, the illegal dumping? In the river.”

“By Johnson & Toulouse?” he asks, checking his watch. His report on the subject had gone out less than half an hour ago.

“Yeah, man. Look, can your people, like, keep me safe? If I snitch, I mean?”

“Us? The... the television station?” He asks, surprised. “We could maybe try to call the police for you.”

The man laughs, clearly much louder than he intended, as he cuts himself off abruptly.

“Call the cops. That’s funny, man, you’re funny. Look, I’ll meet you at Bloody Island tonight. Midnight. Under the bridge.”

The phone clicks as the man drops the handset back onto its cradle somewhere, the noise jarring. Vic taps his pen on the freshly-written note about the time and location, chewing on the corner of his bottom lip. It’s a trap, _obviously_ it’s a trap, he’s had enough of them sprung on him at this point to recognize that. He considers how best to handle it. The Question is good for knocking heads, but Vic Sage has a surprising amount of cachet amongst the dregs of Hub City society.

And, aside from that, they always, always underestimate him.

***

Vic gasps as his head breaks the surface of the river.

It was stupid to come here as Vic, he reflects as he feels some of the filthy water slither greasily down his throat no matter how hard he tries to cough it up. Should have come as the Question, could have maybe gotten some answers, instead of ruining yet another good suit with river muck. His skin feels slimy, the water adhering to it in a fine film. He shudders as he drags himself laboriously to shore, the aching pain in his shoulder where the second guy had struck him with a glancing knife blow turns to a slow burn.

As murder attempts go, it was surprisingly sloppy, so he supposes he should count his blessings. Probably wouldn’t even make the top five in the ranking of the times he’s been left for dead in this river.

He pauses for a moment on his hands and knees on the shore, breathing deeply, doing his best to expel the last of the water from his mouth and nose.

His car is still parked where he’d left it and, continuing the theme of blessings, only one window has been put through with a brick. He’s really on a roll tonight, he thinks as he sweeps the glass out of his seat and sits down gingerly.

He heads towards home instead of to Tot’s, not really feeling up to yet another lecture about running in without thinking ahead. The sloppiness of his own first aid is a fair trade for a peaceful night spent being berated only by himself. At least he’d actually gotten some information out of all of this, and some confirmation about his previous theories. As he pulls into his parking space he gropes blindly for the hidden pocket in his passenger seat, confirming that all of the documents he’d stored there are still safe. He almost scoops them out, then glances at himself, still dripping and covered in river mud and who knows what else, some long strands of slimy river weed still clinging tenaciously to one leg. Probably best to take them out after a shower.

When he gets through his front door he finds himself leaning back against it, closing his eyes and just breathing for a moment, taking stock of his body beyond the throbbing in his shoulder, searching out any other injury or strain.

His eyes pop open at the sound of a low chuckle coming from the darkness of his bedroom door.

“You look like you’ve had quite the night.”

“Jesus, John,” he says, without any heat, tossing his wallet and his keys-- the only keys to his apartment--onto the island, “did you break into my apartment? Again?”

John doesn’t answer, just steps a little further into the dim light of the main room and smiles. His t-shirt, which bears the logo for some impossibly obscure band that Charlie has never heard of, hangs loosely on him, and his hair is tousled; he’s clearly been sleeping. Charlie gravitates towards him without thinking, tired and in pain and wanting to just lay his head on John’s shoulder for a minute.

Just as he’s about to reach him, John dodges backwards deftly, eyeing his soggy clothes in distaste.

“I know I’ve been away for a while, love, but I’m not that desperate yet,” he says, watching his coat drip muddy water onto the growing puddle on the floor, “you take a shower and then maybe I’ll let you touch me again.”

It takes forever to trudge to the bathroom, and even longer to strip out of his sodden clothing, every piece of fabric refusing to release its hold on his skin. It takes so long that John gives up watching from the bed and offering his occasional commentary on the situation, and by the time Charlie is heading to the shower John is asleep. While he scrubs off the remaining river slime, he tries to remember where John had been last. Demonic possession of a whole town in the Black Country? Vampires in Magaluf? One of those was this week, he thinks. He slides into bed, wincing as his newly-bandaged shoulder takes a little weight as he shuffles closer to the warm lump that is John.

He is asleep almost as soon as his head touches the pillow.

***

When he wakes up again in the early hours of the morning, he is warm and comfortable, his limbs entangled around John, who breathes deeply and evenly. He blinks, eyes straining as he peers into the darkest corner of his bedroom. Some trick of the light, maybe some lingering remnant of a dream he’s too tired to recall, makes the shadows seem to almost outline the shape of three people standing close together.

He closes his eyes again and drifts off.

***

When he wakes up to his alarm at 6 the next morning John isn’t in bed, and his pillow is cold.

Charlie has the vague memory of something unsettling from the night before, a bad taste on his tongue, and he feels all of his muscles coiling against his will, skin prickling. There is nothing in the far corner of the room, he thinks, unbidden, and isn’t quite sure why he would. He almost starts to worry that he somehow dreamed John’s arrival, when he hears sounds from beyond the door: shuffling in the kitchen, a cupboard door being closed, someone singing in a voice too soft to make out clearly.

He oozes out of bed, making it to the kitchen just in time to see John on his tiptoes, straining to reach the electric kettle that Charlie had tucked away up there after John had just shown up with it one day, despite Charlie’s protests about having a perfectly good stovetop one. John smiles when he notices him, only a little surprised by his silent appearance in the kitchen, and goes back to filling the kettle. Charlie hovers on the periphery as John makes the tea, relaxing incrementally in the face of John’s air of unconcern. John doesn’t comment on how close he’s hovering; instead, they talk idly while they wait, about Charlie’s adventure in the river and John’s trip to Hub City, and Charlie agrees that jetlag is truly a bitch for waking him up so early while John pours boiling water into mismatched mugs, one with a logo for Charlie’s television station, the other a yellow submarine. Charlie reaches for his almost as soon as John stops pouring, and John swats his hand away, barely making contact with the backs of Charlie’s fingers.

Charlie puts on a wounded expression regardless, playing up his injury.

“You have to let it steep for at least a few minutes, you savage,” John says, pushing Charlie’s hand away as he tries again.

“I feel like I’m already doing you a pretty big favor by not throwing it into the nearest harbor,” Charlie says, grinning.

“You barbarian,” John says in horror, pressing one hand to his chest in shock. Charlie snakes an arm around his waist, pulling him in close so John’s back is pressed tightly against his chest.

“You love it,” Charlie says, kissing gently down John’s neck. John grumbles disapprovingly, even as he lets himself sink back into Charlie’s arms.

“So,” John says, his voice warm, “what’s the plan for the rest of the day?”

Charlie glances at the time on the kitchen clock.

“Well,” he says, “I have to be at work in about an hour.”

John pulls forward, breaking Charlie’s hold, and turns to face him.

“Work?” he asks, brows raised.

“Yes, unfortunately it’s the only way I’ve managed to convince the station to keep paying me.”

“And what am I supposed to do while you go out and “work?’” John asks, putting air quotes around the final word. Charlie shrugs.

“You can stay here. Watch TV. Read a book.” He looks towards the window, watching a gang of teens push an old man into the street, then turn and flee as the man pulls a wicked-looking knife on them. Charlie’s eyes track the group until they have rounded the corner. “...Maybe don’t go outside. I’ll be back at maybe seven. I promise I won’t stay late. I’ll text you if someone tries to kill me again.”

“Lucky me,” John says, crossing his arms, “I come all the way to America after almost a month away, spend hundreds of pounds on the ticket, all for a chance to sit on me jack in scenic your flat.”

“We both know you didn’t actually pay for your ticket, John.”

“That isn’t the _point_ ,” he huffs, then changes tack, “you could always call in sick.”

“I used up all my sick leave that time I got shot. Actually, I owe time on that one. Apparently it was only supposed to take me two days to recover from being shot in the lung.”

John makes a tsking sound, and, anticipating another scathing indictment of his country’s social safety net, Charlie snatches his wallet and pulls out several bills, holding them out towards John.

“Here, I’ll leave you some money, if you want to order something for lunch.”

“I’m not a teenager that you’ve hired to flat-sit for you,” John says, eying the money with disapproval.

“Well, fine, I’ll take it ba--”

John grabs his hand, easing the money from his grip.

“No,” he says, “it’s mine now.” He pockets the money.

Charlie finds himself fighting back a grin.

“Look, I’ll take you somewhere nice tonight, okay?” His eyes shift to the window again for the briefest moment. “Maybe in the next town over.”

“Like Maccy D’s?” John asks, eyes narrowed.

Charlie hesitates.

“Somewhere even nicer than that, if such things are possible,” he says. John nods, placated if still slightly disgruntled. Glancing at the clock again, Charlie grins and moves closer.

“You know, I still have a whole hour until I have to leave for the station.”

Charlie ends up being late for work.

***

His second stop-- after a mercifully brief visit to the station during which he’d dropped off some of his papers with Nora and dodged yet another confrontation with Finch, the station manager-- is the hospital.

It isn’t hard to find people who have been injured by the chemical spills. There are dozens of people currently admitted, with complaints ranging from nausea to crippling headaches to dangerous seizures, but it is hard to find people who are willing to be on record. After the tenth person whose treatment has been mysteriously paid for turns him down for an interview, he wanders into the hospital cafeteria and takes a seat in the back corner, flipping through his scant notes.

He’s there for about ten minutes when a nervous-looking doctor edges towards his corner.

“Hi,” she says quietly, taking a seat at the table next to his, both hands clutching her lanyard, on which swings her hospital ID card, announcing her identity as Dr. Marya Semjonova of the emergency department, “you’re Vic Sage, right? From the news?” He nods, picking up his pen.

“I’m looking into the recent spate of poisonings in and around the river,” he says, “would you be willing to go on the record about them?”

She’s already shaking her head “no” before the question is even half out of his mouth.

“You can’t use my name, or even say that someone from the hospital said anything,” she says, belatedly realizing that he can read her ID, and flipping it around so all he can see is a tiny color-coded chart of hospital codes, “but look, someone has to talk about it. We’ve been getting people coming into the emergency room for the past few days. Seizures, hallucinations, agitation and aggression, we’ve even got three people in intractable comas upstairs. We think it’s from drinking the water. It used to be just people who live around the river, but I think it’s gotten into the pipes. We tried calling in the EPA, but...” she shrugs and rolls her eyes, the typical Hub City response to federal agencies and their unique indifference to Hub City’s various crises.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go on record? We could really use another witness on this. We can disguise your face and voice.”

She shakes her head again.

“The admins have been pretty clear that we shouldn’t be talking to the media. But you have to get the word out to people, get them to stop drinking the water. It doesn’t take much to send them here.”

She sighs, casting her eyes quickly over the mostly-empty cafeteria, and he joins her paranoid scan, eyes lingering for a moment on several black-clad teenagers who have emerged from the alcove beside the self-serve coffee machine, and who begin to walk purposefully in the direction of his corner.

“It’s only a matter of time until somebody dies,” she says, drawing his attention back to her as she rises to her feet, “please do what you can.”

She scurries away, her ugly rubber shoes squeaking on the laminate flooring. He watches her go, then shifts his eyes quickly towards the direction from which the teens had been approaching.

They are already gone.

He narrows his eyes and flips his book closed. Rising, he abandons his more-punishment-than-beverage hospital coffee on the table and, keeping his eyes open for pursuit, heads towards the river.

***

He juggles several bottles of water as he attempts to reach his pockets, trying to find the key to Tot’s house. Before he manages to locate it, the door opens. Tot raises his eyebrows, eyes flicking down to the silty brown water in his arms and back up to his face.

“Filthy river water, Charlie?” he says, voice flat, “You shouldn’t have.”

Charlie sidles awkwardly past Tot, feeling the bottles sliding out of his arms, managing to catch one by pinning it to his chest with his chin.

“It’s the pollution case, Tot,” he says, bringing them into Tot’s alleged living room, whose comfortable furnishings have mostly given way to his ever-growing makeshift laboratory, “I wasn’t sure how much you would need, so...” he shrugs, dumping the bottles on the couch.

Tot sighs in mild disapproval as one of the bottles rolls across the cushion, leaving a trail of sandy water in its wake.

“Well,” he says, “I’ll give them a look for you.”

“Do you know how long it will take?” Charlie asks, glancing at his watch as he does so. He needs to be at the station in a little over an hour.

“A few hours at least, maybe the whole night,” Tot says, bustling around the room, setting up various bits of equipment, “you could come back after you finish recording the evening broadcast, I might be done then.”

“I can’t,” Charlie says, shaking his head, “I promised John I would take him out for dinner.”

Tot perks up at this, immediately dropping the loops of tubes he had been holding and spinning to face him.

“Oh,” he says, grinning, “so your young man is in town?”

“Please stop calling him that,” Charlie says, under his breath for the hundredth time, knowing that Tot won’t listen.

“And you’re going for dinner, you say?” Tot barrels on.

“He’s hungry.”

“You don’t have any food in your house?”

“I crave bouillabaisse.”

“French food! What did you do that you have to apologize for?”

“I just promised to take him somewhere nice, Tot.”

“Maybe you could swing by after your dinner to get the results. Bring him with you, I’m sure he won’t mind.” Tot grins.

Charlie thinks about Tot and John meeting, about everything they might talk about. He thinks about the endless philosophical questions Tot will ask, the smartass answers that John no doubt will give. He thinks about John asking what Charlie was like in college and, worse, Tot telling him.

Charlie feels his body shudder.

“I’m going to do us both a favor and go make some coffee for you before I go to the station,” Charlie says, already walking towards the kitchen.

The tiny, ancient television on the counter by the sink is on, but seems to have been tuned into nothing. The static on the screen occasionally appears to coalesce into some sort of purposeful movement, as if a television show is buried somewhere under several layers of snow. As he fills the reservoir he notices that the white noise is breaking too, sometimes receding enough that he thinks he can almost hear voices.

He lets his mind wander as the coffee machine whirs and burbles to life, staring sightlessly out of the window above the sink. An electric buzz fades slowly into his awareness, and he finds himself growing inexplicably uncomfortable. He glances behind himself, catching a glimpse of Tot moving in the other room. He can feel his heart racing in his chest, pounding in his ears. Sweat breaks out on his skin and he realizes his hands are clutching the edge of the sink, his arms trembling as if barely able to support his weight.

“Someone has to ask,” says a voice, he thinks that he hears a voice, a female voice, coming from the screen. There is a shape there now, a person-shaped void in the static, completely black. He finds himself drawn to looking into it, his eyes beginning to burn and ache as he resists the urge to blink. The buzzing grows louder in his ears, and he feels like he is just on the edge of catching a conversation that is taking place in an adjoining room.

Something falls to the floor behind him and the spell is broken.

He wrenches his eyes away to look back into the living room, where Tot is carefully righting some piece of equipment. Beside him, the coffee machine trills its happy series of notes to alert him that it has completed its task. The TV continues to produce only static, but he has the vaguest sense that it is all random now. The movement in its depth has gone, and with it the voices.

He shakes his head and takes a breath, centering himself and falling into the ritual of coffee preparation, trying to calm his racing heart.

“What were you watching?” he asks, bringing the coffee into the living room.

“Hmm?” Tot looks up at him from the delicate tangle of wires that he is fiddling with.

“On the TV in the kitchen,” he gestures towards the door with his head, setting the cup on a stack of philosophy textbooks.

“Nothing, I think,” Tot rises and strides into the kitchen. The gently pulsing light of the television vanishes with a click. Tot stops in the doorway, regarding Charlie with his head slightly cocked. “You have that look,” he says, “the look you get when you have something to investigate.”

“When do I not, Tot?” he asks, forcing himself to smile, to keep his voice light. “I’m going to head to the station. I might come back tonight, or maybe tomorrow. Let me know if you notice anything weird.”

He can’t stop his eyes from straying to the darkened kitchen, to the dull reflection of the television screen.

***

He is still thinking about the television as he drives to the station.

Something about it doesn’t sit right, but he tries to convince himself that it was some extremely avant-garde music video that he just doesn’t get. Would Tot be watching something like that? Maybe it was just some quirk of whatever unoccupied channel the television was tuned to.

He considers this idea-- and he thinks he’s just about ready to tell himself he believes it-- as his hand goes to turn on the radio. He expects to hear the inane chattering typical of KYFI in the late afternoon, something to drown out his thoughts, but instead he is greeted by a wall of static. Before he’s even registered it he's turned the radio off, and his hands are gripping the wheel hard.

He drives the rest of the way to work in silence

***

Sitting at his news desk in the middle of the studio during the recording of the evening show, Vic taps his pen on his notes arrhythmically.

He is waiting for the prerecorded clip of Evelyn to finish delivering whatever human interest piece she’s been forced by the powers that be into producing this week. He’d tried to convince Finch to let him run the Johnson & Toulouse story, but his heart hadn’t been in it, and he hadn’t protested when Finch had turned him down, had barely even registered the suspicious looks Finch was casting his way as they set up for the broadcast.

He glances up at the screen just as Evelyn’s interview is winding down. Behind her, three teens with dyed hair and edgy goth clothes are staring intensely at the camera, moving towards it as slowly and stealthily as they can.

Vic freezes, eyes going wide as his entire body tenses, and he realizes he is shivering. He recognizes the three, the teens he had seen in the hospital, the ones who had vanished. One of them, the boy with purple hair, opens his mouth to speak, but, before he can, Evelyn throws it back to the studio, and the clip cuts out.

Vic stares at the blank screen for a moment longer, unblinking, before he shakes himself and launches, only a little unsteadily, into his next segment.

After the recording is over, he returns to his office and barricades himself in, sitting at his desk with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. He gets one deep breath in before the phone rings, trilling a tinny riff from _London Calling_.

“’Lo, love,” John’s voice is warm and rough, and Charlie guesses that he had woken up recently, “saw your show tonight, you looked like you saw a ghost at the end there.” He pauses. “Did you actually see a ghost? I could exorcise it for you. I’ll even give you the friends and family discount.”

Charlie forces a laugh.

“No, no ghosts,” he says, and then, before John can push him on it, “look, about tonight--”

He breaks off as John sighs.

“You have better things to do.”

It’s not a question, and John’s voice has become tight and controlled, his disappointment evident in the way that all emotion has dropped out of his words.

Charlie feels an overwhelming pressure in his chest.

“No, I just, I won’t be home until eight,” he finds himself saying, the words rushing out of his mouth before he can think about them, “I have a little bit of paperwork I need to get done for tomorrow.”

"Oh," John says, the surprise evident in his voice before he clears his throat, "that's great, actually, plenty of time for a shower."

"Excellent. I’ll text you when I’m on my way. See you later."

Charlie thinks he can hear the beginning of a word when he hangs up.

***

He runs into Evelyn in the hallway near the records room, where he had been pacing. Glancing at his watch and confirming that he still has almost an hour until he promised to be home, he stops to talk to her.

“Nice report tonight,” he says with a half smile, “Finch is still pretty pissed about that time you accidentally gave your lead to the _Daily Planet_ , huh?” She rolls her eyes.

“You have no idea, Vic. Every time he makes me do a report on some cheese factory’s grand reopening I think that this has to be it, this has to be the day he gets over it. And then I’m back down at the next one.”

“Still, at least you get to interact with the people. The salt of the Earth. Really remind you who you’re doing it all for.” He smiles conspiratorially, and she grins back. Seeing an opportunity, he continues as casually as he can, “Speaking of, you did a great job ignoring those teens who were hanging out behind you.”

Evelyn cocks her head, her nose wrinkling slightly in confusion.

“Teens? I didn’t notice anybody around.” She shrugs. “To be fair, I was pretty focused on not falling asleep while the foreman was talking.” She frowns slightly, muttering lowly, “Gordie never even mentioned them to me, what a dick.”

He feels the blood draining from his face, and she tilts her head a little, brow furrowing in concern.

“Are you alright, Vic? You don’t look well.”

“Yes, of course,” he smoothes his face as best he can, “if you’ll excuse me, Evelyn.”

He offers her a perfunctory smile and hurries down the hallway towards his office and away from Evelyn’s confused expression as quickly as he can.

***

Barricaded in his office once more, he turns his phone around in his hands several times, finally convincing himself to send a text to Tot.

“ _Have you found anything yet_?”

He stares at the phone for a solid five minutes before Tot’s reply finally appears.

“ _Yes Charlie, and I had so much time to spare that I solved the Hodge conjecture._ ”

“ _... So is that a no then._ ”

“ _That’s a no._ ”

He tosses the phone back onto his desk and takes a breath, and stock of the situation so far.

There’s no way that Johnson & Toulouse is sending teenagers to stalk him. They’re not exactly subtle, so useless for surveillance, and they’re probably the least intimidating people he’s ever been followed by, so they’re not trying to scare him off. How would they have even gotten them on the television? No, he doesn’t know that they were on the television. There probably wasn’t anybody on the television.

He takes another breath.

Sometimes, he reminds himself, there is no deeper relationship, there’s no conspiracy underneath everything. He needs to remember this.

Still, he feels his fingers itching to lay bare the connections, to uncover what has been hidden.

He clenches his hands.

He knows that trying to find these connections now will drag him into a spiral of doubt and paranoia. He should stop for the day.

He glances at his watch, sees that it’s only five past seven. He told John he’d be home in an hour. Going home too soon will just lead to awkward questions about what’s going on with him, about the case. Better to stay here just a little longer.

He boots up his computer and googles Dominique Johnson and Henry Toulouse. He already knows more about them than their Wikipedia pages can tell him, but it's diverting enough to keep his attention without getting too invested. He clicks on a recently posted news link about their latest acquisition in Chicago, but can’t get past an ad for a romantic getaway in London that holds his whole screen hostage. Frustrated, he backtracks, and spends an agonizing ten minutes or so trying to get himself through the secure employee login and into their intranet. When he gets through, he finds that the projects tab contains several nearly nonsensical items, which stand out from the more typical titles due to the lime green font they are written in. What is “Say yes to the shaman,” he wonders, and why would anybody need to “Wear the white gloves” or “Listen for the song”? Who is “The blue child”? What can be found “In the hospital”? He tries to click on the first link, “Say yes to the shaman,” which opens onto a black page with a single line of white text in the center.

“You were in the north,” it reads, the word “north” underlined. He clicks on it cautiously, and the first line of text blinks out, to be replaced by a second in an eye-searing teal colour. “Knotted thrice, don’t let go,” it says.

Blinking uncertainly, he returns to the list page, and clicks on “Wear the white gloves.” Again, the white text, this time reading “A monster beneath the skin.” He clicks. “All should be forgiven,” the teal text insists.

He feels his breathing quicken, and he goes back to click on “The blue child.” "What’s missing must be found.” “He has betrayed you.”

The same progression of colors, the same seemingly random, meaningless phrases.

He leans back in his chair and stares at the final line, brow furrowed, struggling to make sense of any of this. Some sort of embedded code for their agents, maybe? As he watches the page it spontaneously reloads itself, becoming a white error page with the Johnson & Toulouse header and footer. Have they detected him? He goes back to the projects page, which he still has access to. All of the lime green text is missing, the page appearing to be entirely unremarkable now. He becomes absorbed in finding them again, clicking through every page, hunting for lime green text in the middle of tedious policy documents and quarterly reports. At some point he writes down every piece of text that he can remember, alternating between hunting on the screen and looking at the messages, in the hope that the connection, the meaning, will become clear.

He is halfway through an OSHA training document when he spots that the word “tonight” is highlighted in lime green and underlined. Eagerly he clicks on it, taken to the same black page.

“He is reading this.”

He clicks, feeling a tightness in his chest.

“He does not understand.”

His uneasiness grows, and he clicks again, the teal text making way for lime green.

“Hello, Vic.”

He pushes himself back from the screen physically, his chair rolling into the opposite wall with the force of his movement. The message blinks once, twice, then vanishes. He breathes heavily, eyes fixed on the black screen from across the room. From somewhere on his desk his phone buzzes violently, and he feels his pulse skyrocket, whole body tensing for a long moment before he manages to talk himself down. He inches towards the phone, keeping the computer within his line of sight.

“w _ant me to order something_ ” He looks at the time on his phone. 8:15.

“Shit.” He says aloud. Another message pings, a belated “ _x_ ” appended to John’s earlier message. He looks up at the computer screen, which had at some point returned to the Johnson & Toulouse error page.

“ _I’m on my way_ ” he texts back, scooping up his jacket and keys, twisting to grab his notes from beside the computer as he turns it off. “ _Sorry_ ,” he adds as he hurries down the hall towards the parking lot, barely acknowledging the farewells offered by the few people still in their offices.

***

When he gets home he can hear the low, electric murmuring of the television in the bedroom, and he hesitates by the door for a long moment. He knows John is in there somewhere, but a part of him still resists moving towards the flickering light.

Before he can force himself more than a step forward, John’s head pokes out around the door.

“Charlie,” he says, tone equivocal, “you’re home.” He emerges fully from the darkened room, his clothes a little rumpled from where he’s obviously been lying on the bed.

“Yes,” he agrees, and then, realizing how awkward he sounds, he adds, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so late.” He runs a hand through his hair, feeling the gel loosen around his fingers.

“It’s okay,” John offers a small smile, seems to be waiting for something, but Charlie doesn’t know what, and after a long moment John continues, “good day at work?”

Charlie thinks about his day, about the slow dissolution of his reality and how completely unable he is to stop it, and he feels an inexplicable heat in his chest, rising up and spilling over into his limbs, his face, causing his body to flush with a violent energy.

“Yes,” he says, clamping down hard with his teeth as soon as the word has escaped, fighting to bite back the irritation and anger that he dimly realizes John doesn’t deserve.

“I see.” John cocks his head, eyes searching.

Charlie feels himself flush even more, which just compounds his irritation. He takes a deep breath.

“I’ll just change and then we can go,” he says, brushing past John and into the bedroom, beginning to take off his shirt, fingers fumbling on the buttons as he feels the violence that he can’t seem to shake seeking some outlet.

“Are you sure you want to go out, Charlie?” John asks, observing him inscrutably from the doorway.

“I offered, didn’t I?” he snaps, and then, regretting it, “I mean, I do. You deserve something nice after being stuck here all day.” He forces a smile.

“Okay, because you don’t really seem to be in the mood, so we can just--”

“No!” He says, too loudly, and he softens his voice, “I can... we can do this, okay?”

His hand goes to his hair again, running through it and crumbling the last of the KBEL hairdresser’s hard work. It’s getting too long, he knows, it’s beginning to curl uncontrollably.

A curl escapes the gel in his hand’s wake, bouncing free, dangling in front of his eye.

“Right,” John says, eying him skeptically, his arms crossed.

“I’m sorry I was late, okay?” he says, giving up on trying to smooth his hair back into place, “I already said I was sorry.”

“I know.” John’s voice is flat, emotionless.

“I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“I just asked how your day was, Charlie.”

“Yeah, but I’m not stupid, John, I can read between the lines. You keep asking questions, calling me at work, you’re just--”

“Worried? Since, you know, we’re in Hub City, and you spend your whole life finding new ways to put yourself directly in harm’s way?” John asks, raising his eyebrow.

Charlie doesn’t say anything, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The sound of his own pulse is loud in his ears, throbbing through him, drowning out his logic and reason. He feels so angry, but he fights it down, wrestles with himself in silence, hands clenching and unclenching. He cannot bring himself to look at John.

“Yeah, shame you can’t hang up on me now, isn’t it?” John sighs, clearly exasperated. “It’s fine, Charlie. I’m going to go order something. You can go and do whatever it is you would obviously rather be doing right now.”

He turns and heads towards the kitchen, pulling the door mostly shut with him as he goes. Charlie can hear the rush of his pulse in his ears, and under it a growing electrical buzz that makes his head ache.

“John, I--” he takes a step to follow, but freezes in place as he feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Something cold traces a lazy path towards the base of his neck, coalescing into a solid weight as it lands on his shoulder, becoming a hand whose fingers dig into his arm, tugging him gently backwards. He spins, throwing himself against the nearby wall, eyes wildly searching the empty air. His heart is racing out of control, his breathing erratic and overloud to his own ears.

There is nothing there.

His eyes land on the television. The three teens are there, standing in front of pulsing static. The boy with black hair reaches one hand towards the screen, clearly hits a barrier, and then seems to put real effort into the action. As he watches, the screen bows outwards around the boy’s hand, his arm trembling from the obvious effort. The screen cracks with a soft noise, and, when the boy continues to push, it shatters. Simultaneously, the electricity in the whole apartment goes out, and the teens wink out of existence, leaving behind jagged glass like teeth in the gaping maw of the television’s husk.

Charlie sinks to the ground, sliding down the wall until he is crouched on his haunches, hunched over his knees, hands tangled in his hair.

“Charlie, did you-- Charlie?” John’s feet come to a stop in front of him. Charlie takes a deep shuddering breath in and shakes his head, not willing to trust himself to speak. “What did you do?” John takes a step away, towards the television, and Charlie finally manages to speak

“I think I’ve been poisoned,” he says, “either that, or I’m going insane.” He lets the “again” go unsaid, but he feels it burning on his tongue. He swallows, and it burns down his throat.

“Poisoned?” John is crouching in front of him now. Charlie nods, releasing his own head, but staying huddled.

“The case I was investigating. They’re putting something in the water. When I got thrown in the river, I--” he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes-- “I keep hallucinating. These... these people, following me, talking to me, sending me secret messages. I thought they would go away,” he says, quieter now, “but it just keeps getting worse.”

“Right,” John says, standing and hauling Charlie up behind him, “well, I guess we should get you to a hospital. Can you still drive, or should I be calling an ambulance?”

“No--” Charlie begins.

“No to the ambulance?” John asks before he can clarify, “You don’t think it’s worth it, you don’t want to pay for it, or is it likely to currently be on fire?

“No to the hospital, because they might find me there.” At John’s concerned expression, he adds, “Johnson & Toulouse’s people, not the hallucinations. We have to go to Tot.”

“... I’m sorry, who?”

***

Constantine watches Charlie out of the corner of his eye as they drive down the dark side roads to the edge of Hub City, the streetlamps casting their staccato light on Charlie’s grim face, his hands gripping tightly to the wheel. He’s gotten significantly less twitchy since Constantine had done his best with a stopgap healing, but he is still obviously tense, and had almost bitten Constantine’s head off when he’d offered to turn on the radio. Of course they couldn’t call a taxi, in case whoever was after him this month sent some assassins. Much better to drive under the influence of some unknown hallucinogen, of course, and just trust that whatever healing Constantine could cobble together would be enough.

“So,” Constantine says into the silence, trying to take his own mind off of speculating as to whether Charlie has always been this reckless as a driver, or if he’s succumbing to the poison, “they’re poisoning Hub City’s water?”

“Just the river. It might be getting into the drinking water, but the last time I tried to find out they hired someone to murder me.” He looks over at Constantine, and his eyes soften, “You’re fine. The only people who were in the hospital had direct contact with the river.”

“That you know of,” Constantine mutters, but he feels a weight come off his shoulders, “how long has this been happening? When did you start investigating?”

“About a month since I started looking into it, they’ve been at it for maybe three months. I was working on it the last time you were here.”

“You never mentioned this.”

“Do I have to tell you everything?” Charlie snaps, and then his eyes widen and he looks at Constantine with horror, “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Constantine says, “you’ve a lot going on.”

“No, really, I’m sorry. The doctor that I met at the hospital told me that aggression was one of the symptoms of the poisoning. I’m so sorry, I swear, just-- I’m sorry.” Charlie finishes the sentence hunched in on himself, his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him, the picture of misery.

“I understand, Charlie,” he says, and then, after a moment, “is that why you broke the television, then?”

“W-what?” Charlie’s eyes are glued to him now, “John, I didn’t break-- John, that was a hallucination. I didn’t... was it actually broken?” His voice is closer to the edge of hysteria than Constantine has ever heard it.

Constantine pushes himself out of his slouch.

“It was totally shattered when I came in. You sure you didn’t punch it and just... forget? Maybe it’s doing something to your memory?” Constantine suggests.

Charlie pulls into some nondescript bungalow’s drive and extends both of his hands towards Constantine, showing off the smooth, unblemished skin of his knuckles.  
“Huh,” Constantine says, uncertain.

“We’re here, by the way,” Charlie opens his door and slides out into the darkness.

***

The door is answered by an old man with long white hair after several long minutes of knocking and texting, interspersed with Charlie looking out nervously into the night.

“Charlie!” the old man, who he assumes to be Tot, says, “I was just about to call you, I--” his gaze falls upon Constantine and his face lights up, eyes shifting between Constantine and Charlie several times in obvious delight. “Is this-- are you John?” he asks Constantine.

“Er, yeah, that’s me,” he says, looking at Charlie, whose eyes are closed, his face set in a grimace.

“Please don’t do this to me,” Charlie says under his breath, so softly that Constantine almost doesn’t catch it. The old man, for his part, is grinning broadly.

“Come in, please!” the old man stands back, gesturing them over the threshold. Constantine trails after them into a sitting room that seems to have been taken over by the explosion of a small laboratory.

“Well,” the old man says, turning to face them, “aren’t you going to introduce us, Charlie?” Charlie sighs.

“Do I have to shake his hand for you? Introduce yourself.” Charlie brushes past the old man and vanishes down the hallway into some other room, slamming the door behind him.

The old man raises his eyebrow and turns back towards Constantine.

“I’m Aristotle Rodor, you can call me Tot,” he says into the growing silence, holding out his hand to shake, “It’s nice to meet you, John. Charlie has told me so much about you.”

“Has he?” Constantine asks, taking his hand.

“No, of course not,” his grin is good-natured, as if to undercut the harshness of his words, “I don’t know if he ever would have mentioned you if you hadn’t been kidnapped.”

“Oh, of course,” Constantine says, not quite able to control the hint of bitterness in his voice. He sighs, and glances down the hallway after Charlie. “He’s been like that all evening.”

"That must have made for an awkward dinner."

Constantine feels his eyebrows climb his forehead, surprised that Tot knew about their plans. So Charlie tells _him_ things, he thinks. Isn’t he lucky.

"We didn't go. He's been poisoned." _Allegedly_ , he doesn’t add, feeling vaguely guilty at thinking it, and then irritated at feeling guilty.

“Hmm,” Tot says, “that would explain it. He’s not usually _this_ unreasonable. Is he hallucinating too?” Constantine nods. “Yes, this would fit with what I’ve uncovered.” He stares pensively at a bubbling beaker, then turns his unsettlingly blue eyes back on Constantine. “You must be starving! I think I have some parfait in the fridge.”

***

Tot sits him down in the kitchen with a long spoon and a tall glass of what Americans seem to call parfait, yogurt layered with granola and berries. He feels vaguely like a child who is being indulged with a treat, but he’s so hungry that he doesn’t complain. Tot sits across from him at the table, making occasional notes in his illegible handwriting. Somewhere, a clock ticks. A small television by the sink, volume turned down so much it’s almost muted, reports on the weather.

Constantine cranes his neck slightly, trying to read the equations Tot is writing and rewriting.

“Trying to figure out an antidote,” Tot says without looking up, answering the unasked question.

“That going well?” Constantine asks. Tot shrugs, tapping his pen on the paper.

“No,” he says.

“Huh. Well, at least it’s not lethal, right?” he asks, feeling a tightness in his throat that he must force the words past.

“From what I can tell so far, it should have a gradual progression of neurological symptoms, followed by a coma, and eventually death.” Tot says, voice completely even and seemingly unconcerned. Constantine closes his mouth with a click, his eyes going to the dark hallway, the all-too-silent room that Charlie had vanished into. Tot finally looks up from his book and makes eye contact with Constantine. “In a couple of days, probably. He’ll be fine for now.”

Constantine nods as if this is comforting to hear, and goes back to stirring a yogurt layer into a granola layer until it has become a mushy, unappetising mess. Tot, still watching him, tilts his head a little to the side.

“I’ve never been good with accents, but I had an English TA once. You’re English, right?”

“Yes,” Constantine braces himself for the inevitable incredibly wrong guess.

“From somewhere up north, right? Like, uh, Manchester?”

“Ha!” Constantine says despite himself, surprised and slightly relieved, “close enough. Closer than _Wales_ , anyways.”

Tot laughs. “Not a lot of people over here familiar with your accent, huh? So where are you from, then?”

“Liverpool. But I live in London mostly, now.”

Tot makes a noise, somewhere between acknowledgement and appreciation. Constantine shrugs, and goes back to scraping down the sides of his glass.

“So,” Tot finally says, “Charlie told me you’re some sort of... exorcist? Demonologist?” Tot’s voice is completely devoid of belief or disbelief, his tone blandly curious.

“That’s right.”

“I can’t imagine you’ve found much of interest in Hub City, then. Its vices tend to run to the mundane.”

“You’d be surprised,” Constantine says, “Charlie was the one who came to me, after all.”

“Was he?” Tot looks vaguely surprised by this, and Constantine is about to explain about ancient gods and blood magic when from somewhere down the hall comes the sound of something shattering.

Constantine sighs, then berates himself for sighing.

“His hallucinations probably just broke something,” he says.

Tot looks at him curiously, but nonetheless goes to investigate after instructing Constantine to stay behind. He thinks about arguing, or just following Tot regardless, but he remembers Charlie on the way here, hunched over in his seat and miserable about his loss of control, and the thought of seeing Charlie in an even worse condition unsettles him; barely any time has passed since he found Charlie bleeding to death from a gunshot wound.

He can see the anger in his eyes, too, and obviously he knows that it’s probably the poison, knows that Charlie probably wasn’t lying about breaking the television, but he remembers the detective asking him if things had ever gotten out of hand, remembers Charlie in London, barely restraining himself from punching the hotel room wall. He remembers the strength of Charlie’s fingers on his arm as he’d pulled him around to face him outside of the police station. He remembers Charlie pushing him against a wall in New York

He keeps his seat.

Sitting alone for the first time, he becomes aware of a strange electricity in the air, making his skin break out in gooseflesh, the hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck rising. The telly behind him, he notices, is emitting a buzzing, staticky sound that is growing more and more grating. He turns, and sees that the picture has devolved into snow.

“John!” Tot calls from down the hall, “come here, quickly!”

Constantine rises and hurries towards the sound of Tot’s voice, to a half-open door that is spilling light into the dark hallway. Tot is on the floor, awkwardly pressed up against a chest of drawers with Charlie’s head pillowed in his lap. Charlie, for his part, seems to be unconscious. The floor around them is covered in water, and glass from what Constantine thinks might have been a vase is scattered across the floor.

He can see the traces of blood where Tot’s knees have been cut, and several stains also blossom on the pale blue of Charlie’s shirt.

Constantine catches himself staring at the blood, before he registers the slow movement of Charlie’s chest, and he feels his heart start to beat again, startling him into movement.

“What happened?” he asks, dropping to his knees, feeling the water soak into his trousers.

“He had a seizure,” Tot says, smoothing Charlie’s hair back in a mindlessly soothing gesture, “will you help me get him onto the bed?”

Together they manage to grapple Charlie’s dead weight onto the bed, and Constantine does his best to stop Charlie from bleeding on the covers, exhausting the last of the healing magic he knows, while Tot mops up the water and glass.

“Do you want some band-aids for yourself?” Tot asks, eventually, and Constantine realizes that at some point his knees had also gotten cut.

“Nah, you’re alright, mate, I’ve had worse.” He hesitates. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

Tot eyes his cigarettes.

“Not in here,” he says, jerking his head towards the door, “you can go out on the patio.”

***

Sitting out on the patio by himself, Constantine tries to tap out a cigarette. His hands won’t stop shaking, and he isn’t sure why.

Eventually he manages it, and as he takes the first drag he thinks, _I could leave, I could just run away and leave this behind. It would be easy. Hitch to the nearest town, beg, borrow, or steal a ride to the nearest airport_.

He could be back in London by tomorrow, he thinks as he breathes the smoke out into the chilly night air.

On the second drag he realizes what he was thinking. He was considering the idea of running away again, while Charlie is sick, maybe dying.

 _I’m a monster_ , he thinks, letting his head sink into his hands, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eyes. _This is why everybody hates me, because I’m a horrible monster._

He lets out a shaky breath.

To his left he hears the sliding door open gently, and the wood of the deck creaks as someone walks to take up residence in the chair on the other side of the glass table.

“I’ll figure out the cure, don’t worry.” Tot says into the still night air.

“Yeah,” Constantine sits up straight, looking out into the pitch black field behind the house. Tot doesn’t say anything, but Constantine can feel his eyes on him. He shifts in his seat. “I mean, yes, of course you will. I trust you, I didn’t mean to sound--”

“I know,” Tot cuts him off, “I understand. Charlie isn’t doing well, and you’re worried.”

“I didn’t even believe him,” Constantine’s voice is so quiet he’s almost surprised when Tot responds.

“Sorry?”

“I mean, I did. I believed he’d been poisoned, with the hallucinations and all. That’s why I healed him--”

“Healed him?” Tot asks, incredulous. Constantine waves his hand dismissively.

“With magic, and just barely. It’s not really my strong suit. But it made a difference, it made him less... agitated. But I still had this doubt, what if he’s just making this up to get a pass for being late and acting a right prick, and--” he scrubs at his face roughly with one hand-- “fuck me, it sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Well fucking done, me.”

He takes another drag on the cigarette, eyes fixed on the dark beyond the patio light.

“Well,” Tot says finally, after the silence stretches between them for what feels like ages, giving Constantine plenty of time to become truly at home with the prickly hot feeling of shame and regret, “I’ve known Charlie a long time, and I know how... difficult he can be. I remember, before Shiva...” he trails off, eyes fixed on his own hands. Constantine wants to prod, to ask who or what Shiva is and why it matters, but he hesitates, and then Tot is speaking again and the moment is gone. “Anyways, he’s changed since then, but his decisions and his motivations will always be a little baffling. He has two guiding principles, and one is certainly better than the other, but neither is exactly healthy. So, I can understand being unsure of him sometimes.”

“He’s a good person.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Better than I deserve,” Constantine says, quietly, mostly a reminder for himself, but watching Tot out of the corner of his eye, waiting for him to agree.

“Reasonable doubt doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“No.” _Being a bad person makes me a bad person_ , he thinks but does not say.

“Is... is everything alright? With Charlie?” He sounds more worried than he did when he told Constantine about Charlie’s imminent death. Not by much, but it’s there.

“Yeah. It’s fine.” He inhales, then, since this evening can’t possibly get any weirder or more embarrassing, adds, “It’s always fine when it starts though, and then...”

“They leave?” Tot offers.

“Sure.” _Leave. Turn out to be bastards. Go to Hell. Get killed because of me. Try to drag me to Hell_.

“Well, I know you have no reason to trust me at all, but I can tell you that Charlie always tries to be a better person. He’ll never blame you for asking questions or for having doubts. He’s really the last person who can judge someone for that.”

They sit in silence for a few more minutes, and just as Constantine is pressing the stub of his finished cigarette to the new one, Tot stands. “I’m going to go check on him. If he’s awake, I’ll come and let you know. Feel free to sit out here as long as you want.”

He leaves, and Constantine is left to the crickets and the darkness, the hum of electricity from the patio lights.

He isn’t sure how long he’s been out there when he notices the hair on the back of his neck and his arms standing up.

The electric hum has become a steady, rhythmic thrumming that pounds in his ears in time with his heartbeat. He shifts in his seat, hunting for the source of the pulse, the growing unease. Inside the house, the tiny TV on the sink has somehow been turned to face the window, and he can see three figures there, three people in dark clothing, and he feels his eyebrows rise. Three people with colourful hair, just like Charlie had described. Stubbing out his cigarette, he hurries into the house.

As soon as he steps through the door he’s hit with it, the energy that he’d been too distracted and self-absorbed to recognize before. He leans down so he’s level with the television, one elbow on the countertop. Three teens gaze back, their forms occasionally shimmering and shaking, sometimes almost seeming to sink into the snow, before reasserting themselves.

“So what’re you lot, then, casualties of the great Video-Radio War? Did the pictures come and break your heart?”

“Hello, constant one,” says the one on the left, the girl with blue hair.

“Betrayer of hope,” says the middle one, the boy with black hair.

“Crown prince of dead friends,” says the one on the right, the boy with purple hair.

“Right,” Constantine says, “I see you’ve heard of me. Fancy telling me who you are, then?”

“Dead leaves, dying leaves,” says the girl, “I was Autumn.”

“The midpoint, the turning point” says the middle boy, “I am Axel.”

“Things that rend, things that tear,” says the last one, “I will be Talon.”

Constantine rolls his eyes at their intentional obtuseness, and tries to formulate his next question to be as straightforward as possible. Before he can, however, his attention is drawn away. From somewhere in the house he hears the sound of commotion, and then two voices, rising.

“They’re here,” the voices are coming closer, and he recognizes Charlie’s, “I can feel them, Tot.”

“It’s not real, Charlie,” Tot’s voice is pleading, but clearly having no effect.

Charlie bursts into the kitchen, his eyes immediately finding the television. His hair is wild, unruly curls in disarray, his face flushed and feverish, his chest rising and falling too rapidly, as if he has been running. The three teens stare at him impassively.

“See,” Charlie whispers, as Tot enters behind him, “don’t you see them?” he lets himself fall back against the wall.

“He’s waiting for you,” says Autumn, eyes on Charlie.

“He fears the fire,” says Axel.

“He knows he’ll take you there one day,” says Talon.

“They’ll take your heart,” back to Autumn.

“London is calling,” Axel chimes in.

“She will mislead you,” Talon finishes ominously.

Charlie stares at them, then looks between Constantine and Tot pleadingly.

“Can’t you hear them?” he asks.

“There’s nothing--” Tot begins, voice soothing.

“I can, Charlie,” Constantine says.

Charlie’s eyes are immediately on him, looking more focused, and somehow more anguished.

“Did they get to you?” he asks, his voice sounds so broken, “I’m so sorry,” he is whispering now.

Constantine watches him sink into a crouch, feels his own heart constrict at the abject misery that rolls off Charlie in waves. He hesitates, trying to think of how to explain, before realising that Tot is glaring at him. Constantine holds up a hand to forestall him, and moves closer to Charlie, sinking to his knees.

“No, they didn’t, love, not unless you think that your corrupt wankers have taken to hiring confused ghosts.”

“They... what?” asks Tot.

“There’s three ghosts reaching out through your telly, mate,” Constantine says.

“I’m not... I’m not hallucinating?” Charlie asks, a hint of relief making its way into his haunted expression.

Constantine puts a comforting hand on Charlie’s face, thumb running over his cheekbone gently.

“No, no, you’re definitely hallucinating. It’s why you can see them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” he says.

Charlie’s lips pull into a frustrated grimace, his brows knitting.

“Oh, okay,” he says, allowing himself to be pulled off of the floor and helped into a chair, “Great. So I’m still going to die, then. That’s good.”

“I saw death,” says Autumn, “it was in the water.”

“I see death,” says Axel, “it is in your blood.”

“I foresee death,” says Talon, “you will be in Hell.”

“Yeah, all right, can you lot bugger off for a second? What are you, the bloody fates?”

“You also see something on the television screen?” Tot asks, having at some point picked up his notebook, his pen poised to take notes

“Yes,” Constantine says, seeing the trap that is being set, but walking into it nonetheless.

“And the thing in the television is speaking to you, I assume?”

“It’s three things, but yes. We’re speaking to three teens, or, well, their spirits.” Constantine says, knowing he’s digging himself deeper.

“I see.” Tot scribbles something in his book.

“I realise this sounds a little suspicious to you, but Charlie and I’re hardly going to have the same hallucination, are we?” he tries.

“Folie à deux,” Tot says, half to himself, his scribbling increasing in intensity.

“I don’t have any other symptoms,” Constantine says, narrowing his eyes.

“I can’t know that.”

“Look, I dabble in the dark arts. I see these kinds of things all the time, it’s not uncommon.”

“I hope you can understand why I have a few doubts.” Tot is maddeningly flat and matter-of-fact.

“Just... let me work, yeah? I promise I won’t smash your telly. And neither will they,” he says, gesturing at the screen and giving the three teens a warning look.

“Right. Okay,” Tot says, his voice still completely devoid of judgement, “well, I’ll just sit here to work, you two carry on.”

He takes a seat at the table across from Charlie, and does not look up at them again. Constantine turns back to the screen.

“All right,” he says, “so, what the fuck are you three doing here? Bit of cheeky fun? Watched a little too much telly and now you’re being ironically punished? C’mon, spit it out.”

“We are here because you are here,” says Autumn.

“We strayed from the path, and we were lost,” says Axel.

“We are out of body, yet still in mind,” says Talon.

“So, you tried to play at astral projection and locked yourselves out of your bodies? Bloody brilliant, you three.” He sighs. “Right, I can help, if you promise to sod off and leave us alone after. What’d you do to yourselves?”

“We went walking in search of a path,” says Autumn.

“The light was bright and the water was deep,” says Axel.

“We have lost the path, the thread has snapped,” says Talon.

“Right, that wasn’t helpful at all,” Constantine says, “so let’s start with the basics. What are you? Dead? Dying? Some form of particularly stupid demon?”

“Sons of Adam,” says Autumn.

“Daughter of Eve,” says Axel.

“Our mothers weep, but do not grieve,” says Talon.

“Great,” Constantine turns to Charlie, “they’re fucking rhyming now.” He turns back to the screen, “so you’re still alive somewhere. Where is that, where are you?”

“In Hell,” they chorus in unison.

“And they’re bloody drama queens,” Constantine says, rolling his eyes. Behind him, Charlie snorts.

“We are kept here by the worst of you,” says Autumn, seeming a little indignant.

“Surrounded by betrayed and abandoned lovers,” adds Axel.

Constantine’s eyes widen, and he feels his face flush. He keeps his eyes fixed on the screen.

“... Okay, maybe they actually are in Hell. Who’s there with you?”

“He wants the clock that you promised,” says Talon.

“They seek a door you have already closed,” says Autumn

“She wants revenge for how you screwed her,” says Axel.

“Huh,” Constantine says, thoroughly confused. Sure, it makes sense for Blythe to still be pissed about being trapped in Hell, but Ellie got over that whole betrayal thing ages ago, and there’s no way that the clock is what S.W. still hates him for.

Thinking about everything they have said so far, he begins to form the vaguest notion.

“Er, can you lot tell me where Nick Necro is?” he tries. The three of them blink at him, and then at each other uncertainly.

“Nick Necro is in the city that does not sleep,” says Talon, after a long pause.

“Nick Necro is crafting a weapon of souls,” says Autumn, her voice uncertain.

“Nick Necro is... he is in Hell,” says Axel, stumbling, confusion plain on his pixelated face. Constantine nods, suspicions confirmed.

“They’re stuck outside of time,” he says over his shoulder, “they’ve locked themselves outside of their bodies _and_ they’ve trapped themselves outside of time.” He turns back to the teens, “You’ve really bollocksed this up for yourselves, haven’t you?”

The teens don’t respond, scowling at him.

“Are you going to explain any of this?” Charlie’s voice is cold, but when Constantine turns to look at him he’s rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry,” he says without looking up, his tone apologetic, “I mean, what’s happening?”

“I think they were trying to astral project themselves, y’know, an out of body experience, like. Usually you keep to your own dimension and your soul just goes walkabout, but the Black Parade here have managed to break through a dimensional boundary, and now they’re outside of time and can’t find their way back to their bodies. That about right, you pure cods?”

“We have lost the--” begins Talon.

“Yes, the path, you’ve lost the path, we heard you the first time,” Charlie’s head is hanging low, his hands fisted in his hair, his whole body shivering as if he is freezing. “Sorry,” he says after a silent moment, clearly through gritted teeth, “it’s getting worse.”

Suddenly, his head shoots up, and Constantine can see the darkening circles under his eyes.

“They can see the future, right?”

“Yeah. Well, kind of. It’s more like they’re watching videos, but there’s a dozen clips all playing at once in different tabs, and they’re cycling between them randomly. Past, present, future, they probably couldn’t tell you.”

“But you can get them to focus and answer questions?”

“If you want to call how they’ve been so far ‘focused,’ then yeah.”

“John,” Charlie leans forward in his chair, seeming animated and eager for the first time, “they can get me the evidence I need to nail Johnson & Toulouse. That was you on their website, right?” his bright, almost feverish eyes shift to the screen.

“Sure, but--” Constantine begins.

“And after they’re done with that they can maybe find an antidote.”

“Oh sure, _maybe_ they could do that,” Constantine says, voice flat.

Charlie stands, only a little unsteady, and walks closer to the television.

“Hello,” he says to them, clearly making an effort to sound cordial, “I’m sorry I was short with you. A lot has been going on here. But let’s try to help each other, okay? Don’t answer that. I want you to answer this, as clearly and concisely as you can. Do I expose Johnson & Toulouse?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Great. Thank you. Now, can you tell me how? What do I need to get? Where is the evidence I need?”

“A storm of papers broke above them, and everything burst apart,” says Autumn

“They spilled their guts and now they run into the soil, they sink into the soil,” says Axel.

“Everything that you seek is brightness, everything is in your grasp,” says Talon.

“Come _on_!” Charlie slams his fist onto the countertop, making Constantine flinch. Tot looks up, mildly startled. They share a look of concern, but Charlie has already gone still, breathing deeply. “Okay,” he says, “all right. That’s fine. I just... I’ll find it somewhere. Okay.”

His phone, which was sitting on the table, lights up and makes a pinging noise. They all turn to look at it. It pings again, and again, and again, buzzing itself almost to the edge of the table before Charlie picks it up.

“It’s emails,” he says, “from Johnson & Toulouse.” He scrolls through them, fingers moving quickly, his face lighting up. He drops into his chair. “It’s everything I needed,” he says, not looking up from his phone.

“So you can get us the information that we need,” Constantine says to the screen, but not taking his eyes off of Tot, who is looking at Charlie’s phone with the slightest hint of puzzlement and interest, “I know it’s hard, but I need to know what the antidote is.”

Tot looks at him now, his pen hovering over his notebook.

“Red as a beet, no blood from a stone” says Autumn.

“Hot as a hare, dry as a bone,” says Axel.

“Mad as a hatter, the heart runs alone,” says Talon.

Constantine dutifully repeats all of the random gibberish to Tot, who tilts his head to the side, considering.

“Yes, I suppose those are, roughly, his symptoms, but I can see that, he’s right there,” he gestures at Charlie, who hasn’t looked up this whole time, just hunched further and further over his phone, still shivering, “Those symptoms could mean almost anything.”

“Gonna need to do a bit better than that, kiddas,” he says to the screen.

“Like light through bending glass, it drip-drip-drips upwards,” says Autumn.

“One and one and one, if you try to focus you will be lost,” says Axel.

“Put your ear to the ground, you won’t always hear horses,” says Talon.

Constantine sighs and repeats after them, waiting for Tot’s next objection.

“Ah!” Tot exclaims instead, rising and scurrying out of the kitchen without another word or a backwards glance.

“I guess that did it, lads, well done,” he says, as Tot trots around in the next room, muttering to himself about bioaccumulation and serotonin, “reckon I should get you lot out of there then. Want to try again to tell me where you are?”

Autumn opens her mouth wide, and the room is filled with a regular beeping noise that sounds as if it is being filtered through a poor quality radio. Axel opens his mouth, and Constantine can hear gentle, hushed conversation, just on the edge of being comprehensible. Talon opens his mouth, and a mechanical rasping noise, of air being pumped through tubes, joins the other two.

“Sounds like the hospital,” Charlie is looking at the screen with his brow furrowed, and he seems to be struggling with something, his mouth opening and closing incrementally as he searches for the answer. Finally, something seems to click and he says, “There are three people in comas in the hospital right now.”

He pushes himself up from the table, takes a lurching step away from the stability offered by the chair, and wobbles dangerously.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tot calls from the other room, “You’re not in any state to leave,” he adds, walking up to the doorway and folding his arms across his chest.

“I can look after myself,” Charlie says, and it’s hard to tell whether the spots of colour in his cheeks are from the fever or anger, “I don’t need you to babysit me, Tot, I--”

“Look, I can go to the hospital myself and wake them up, it’s no bother,” Constantine says, pre-empting Charlie’s next tantrum, “Charlie, you should stay here and work on your script for your show tomorrow, yeah?”

He shoots Tot a meaningful look as he helps Charlie back to his seat, and Tot nods.

***

When the hackney arrives, Charlie insists on paying the driver up front, and mutters something to the man that leaves him straight-backed and nervously silent all the way to the hospital, his eyes darting away from Constantine every time he catches the man staring at him in the rear-view mirror. The streets of Hub City look almost peaceful in the early hours, most people seeming to have retreated to their homes or hideouts, and the fires having burned themselves out.

He’s always found getting into hospitals to be particularly easy, since they are almost universally staffed with people who are constantly rushed off their feet, yet have some pathological urge to help. It’s almost trivial to push his way through their security, to convince some staffer or other to tell him what he needs to know.

The three teens-- whose real names, he is amused to note, are Autumn, Alexander, and Axel-- are being held together on the fifth floor. Each of them is hooked up to several beeping machines, their hospital gowns really ruining the aesthetic their hair and piercings are attempting to cultivate. Reconciling himself to being unable to move any of them, he settles himself on the floor of the middle one’s-- the one who had named himself Axel’s--room.

Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath, and lets his soul wander free.

***

Charlie closes his eyes, trying to ignore the way the shadows have begun to move menacingly in the corners of his vision. His right leg is bouncing uncontrollably and his hands are shaking. He takes a breath, riding out the rising swell of yet another unexplained fit of anger and agitation. When he is under control enough to open his eyes again, he focuses hard on collating the information the teens emailed to him, making careful notes about the points that will need to be addressed in his broadcast tomorrow.

He jerks in his seat at a sudden burst of static from the television. The teens, who had vanished as soon as John had left the property, have returned, staring at him solemnly.

“Is John okay?” he asks immediately, half rising from his chair, as if he could do anything about it if he wasn’t.

“Wasn’t, isn’t, will be,” says the girl, who John had called Autumn.

“The toxin’s leaching out, but the poison’s settled in,” says the middle one, Axel.

“You’re not the hurting kind,” Talon, the final one, intones as if it is an insight of great import.

“I can’t tell if you’re doing this on purpose now, or if that’s honestly the best you three can offer,” Charlie says, his exhaustion winning out over his irritation.

“Talking to yourself, Charlie?” Tot asks, bustling into the room carrying a vial and a syringe.

“Hmm? No, I was--” he shifts his eyes towards the television, but the screen is black now, and the air is still and silent-- “never mind.”

“All right,” Tot’s voice is mild as he swabs a place on Charlie’s arm, his grip surprisingly strong as he holds tightly to stop the twitching, “this may sting.”

***

When he wakes up after the second seizure, it is to Tot reassuring him that this reaction was not unexpected, and that it meant the antidote was probably working. He barely remembers the journey to the darkened bedroom, nor does he remember falling asleep.

When he wakes up again some unknown time later, John is tucked uncomfortably into the armchair in the corner, his arms folded awkwardly across his body, his head lolling onto his shoulder.

“Hey,” he says softly, “John.”

John stirs, and twitches himself upright, head swiveling in disorientation.

“Yeah, hey, all right, Charlie?” his voice is thick with sleep.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m feeling better. Why don’t you come to bed?” He does his best to twitch the covers back without actually uncovering himself.

John doesn’t move for a long moment, regarding him solemnly, his eyes glittering in the low light let in by the blinds. Finally he stands, and slides into the bed, bringing with him the chill of the night air.

When he wakes up the next morning, John is lying on his side facing the window, his whole body a compact line, his back just barely out of reach of Charlie’s hands, which are splayed out towards him. Shimmying closer, he hooks his arm around John’s shoulder, pulling himself up so he’s pressed against his back. He moves to kiss his shoulder, then stops, blinking in surprise as cool blue eyes meet his own.

“You’re awake,” he notes, somewhat unnecessarily.

“Yeah. Jet lag,” John shrugs, rolling onto his back, pushing Charlie backwards slightly.

“Truly a bitch,” Charlie agrees, smiling and moving to kiss John. His lips feel dry and cold against Charlie’s own.

“How are you feeling?” John asks when Charlie pulls away.

“Much better. No more hallucinations. Well, as far as I can tell.”

“Good,” John’s lips pull into a thin smile as he sits up, stretching. “Tot was leaving for the hospital when I got back,” he says to the ceiling as he rolls his neck, “he went to give them the antidote. He’s probably still there”

“And what about the teens?” Charlie asks, sitting up with him, keeping a little distance between their shoulders as they lean against the headboard.

“Oh, I got them back to their bodies, no problem. Something similar happened to a friend of mine once, actually, though that wasn’t drugs, just youthful exuberance. They’re still feeling like shite, but that’s what Tot’s antidote is for.”

“That’s good. I guess that means I won’t have to worry about seeing them tonight while I’m reading the news,” he says.

John’s head snaps towards him.

“You’re going back to work today?” he asks, something unreadable in his voice, “You were just poisoned. You’ve only just recovered.”

“Well, I have to. The people of Hub City need to know about what’s been happening under their noses. It’s my duty to expose Johnson & Toulouse for everything they’ve done. Besides, I’m fine now, and my work is far more important than--”

“Okay,” John says, holding up his hands to cut him off.

“My own-- what?”

“Okay,” John says again, shrugging, “you should go. Do your work. Have a good day.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” Charlie hesitates, his eyes running over John, “Um, are you all right?”

“’Course,” John says, stretching and moving to sit on the edge of the bed, his feet dangling onto the floor, his back to Charlie, “just tired, ‘s all.”

“I guess sleeping in the armchair wasn’t the most comfortable,” he says, uncertain.

“Yeah, guess not.”

Charlie frowns, staring at John’s back, trying to work out the source of the tension in the air, trying to understand why he feels so uneasy.

“I’m going to go back home to change before work, I don’t really have any clothes here anymore. Do you want to come with me?”

“Nah, you’re all right, Charlie,” John says, running a hand through his hair, “I can take a cab or something, don’t put yourself out on my account.”

“I’ll be going home anyways, John, it’s no bother.”

“Okay.”

For a long moment, John doesn't move, doesn’t do anything except stare straight ahead at the wall. Charlie hesitates, feeling the uneasiness spreading through his stomach and up into his chest, and he opens his mouth, feels the words trying to push their way up his throat even though he doesn't know what they are. Then John turns to him, a thin smile on his pale face.

"We're going, then?" John asks, and whatever question Charlie’s mind was trying to form melts away.

***

The actual broadcast goes by so quickly it almost feels unreal, and the next thing he knows he’s fending off congratulatory offers of drinks, which are always tossed his way no matter how often he declines them. He thinks for the briefest moment of staying a little late, but then he thinks of John, his quiet disappointment, the look in his eyes when they’d parted ways at his apartment, and he scoops up his keys and heads to the parking lot.

The apartment is dark when he gets home, and for a moment he fears that John has left, but the sound of faint tapping coming from the bedroom reassures him. John is sitting in the dark, Charlie’s own laptop perched on his knees.

“I just saw your bit. You looked good,” he says, nodding at the computer screen.

“You didn’t watch it while it was airing?” Charlie asks, taking off his jacket and putting it back in his closet.

“Well yeah, I don’t want the TV license man to burst through the doors and shoot out my kneecaps, which I assume is the penalty for watching telly without a license in this country.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” Charlie says, crawling onto the bed, trying not to notice the way that John stiffens minutely as their arms touch.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” John says. They sit without speaking for some time, John idly scrolling up and down on the news page without seeming to take in any of the articles

“I guess we won,” Charlie says to break the uncomfortable silence, pointing to a picture of Dominique Johnson and Henry Toulouse being led away in handcuffs.

“Yeah, I guess you did.” John doesn’t look at him, still holding himself stiff and straight.

“Look, John, I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened since you got into town. Everything kind of seems like a bad dream to me, but Tot has assured me that I was a real dick. So, I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorry I didn’t take you to that fancy restaurant yesterday, I promise I’ll make it up to you,” he says, all in a rush.

John doesn’t respond immediately, staring at the computer screen for a little too long, the silence growing tense and brittle.

“That’s okay, Charlie, you weren’t yourself,” John says, his body relaxing incrementally, his shoulder coming to rest against Charlie’s own. He smiles, but there is something in his eyes that makes Charlie uneasy.

He wants to say something. To ask John if he’s really all right.

Instead, he draws him closer with an arm around his shoulders, presses his lips to the side of his head, and asks if he’d like to order in some Chinese food.


End file.
